OT: Pacific Rim

[Alan Fregtman]

Hey guys,

A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I wanted to share some details with you. :)

I'm the lead rigger at Rodeo FX http://rodeofx.com and we did all of the interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), including the visors, foot actuators & mechanical stilts, some digidoubles, etc. (except the holograms/UI graphics that were done by the folks at Hybride.) We also had the chance of doing our first organic creature, the brain in the lab (which involved a lot of "gross" ICE deformations), as well as many beautiful matte paintings and a couple of helicopters.

Overall, we did over a hundred shots. CG was done in Softimage and as far as I know it was all rendered in our favourite renderer, Arnold! We'd still be rendering today if Mentalray had been used. :p We threw countless ~8k textures with displacement and stupid amounts of topology, and good ol' Arnie performed like a champ.

The stilts (the leg controls in the cockpit) had anything from 1500 to 2500 separate meshes and on average about 150 segments (solid groups of parts that moved as one.) Once we identified the "segments" by the end we had a rig of Arnold stand-ins with each segment saved as one ass file, and low-res geo representing that segment constrained to some part of the rig. It then became relatively "light" to have the standins rigged instead of the full raw geo, and it made it quite easy to replace parts or textures later in the pipeline during or after animation. (Also caching was a piece of cake in this scenario, as we only needed to plot the segment nulls instead of thousands of meshes or pointcaching anything.)

On the brain there was procedural pulsing animation driven by ICE deformers. Globules would "breathe", a heart-like organ would pump its ventricles intermittently and an intestine-like organ flowed with bulges travelling along its tract. It was gross and (in my opinion) kind of awesome. lol Speaking of ICE, there was a kind of lettuce behind the brain that was also moving a bit. The modeling was done with strips that were procedurally curled and then if I remember correctly the whole thing was driven via Syflex as the brain gently floated. This lettuce thing was handled by another guy on this mailing list, my  coworker and friend Jonathan Laborde. Maybe if he's reading this he can give more details of how he used ICE in a few other shots.

It was crazy fun project to work on. Fingers crossed that Pacific Rim 2 becomes a reality. :) Anyway, did you guys go see it? What'd you think?

Oh and speaking of other movies, we did a ton of work in "Now You See Me" as well, including hundreds of stadium dudes with our propietary ICE static crowd system, falling/flying money, cg bubbles, an art-directed liquid, lockpicking, flying cards, many vehicles, the projected motiongraphics near the end and a few invisible fx. (I feel like I probably missed something, but anyway, we did a lot.) We were the main vfx vendor on that film, delivering just over 20 minutes worth of vfx "magic" (pun intended.) Again, Soft & Arnold and lots of effects in ICE all throughout.

Cheers,

   -- Alan

[Mirko Jankovic]

Cheers Alan!

Always great to show how Softimage+Arnold IS a winning solution.

There is a lot more studios than we wanna admit that uses one package of another just because this is made with that.

Seeing "our" combo in great movies maybe will show them who is the really boss :)

Cheers and always enjoyed your work :)

All the best and wish you a lot more projects like this, to you and your team.

If you need someone to peek behind your shoulder and make one damn good coffee that raise dead, just call, I'll take even that :)))

[Steven Caron]

was waiting on someone to stand up and take credit. great work guys!

i am hoping for some more behind the scenes? maybe with visuals?

[Eric Thivierge]

You don't want behind the scenes or visuals of Alan...

Great work Alan!


Eric Thivierge
===============
Character TD / RnD
Hybride Technologies

[David Gallagher]

Congratulations!

[Alan Fregtman]

We have a nice making-of showing what we did, but it's pending clearance by WB. I'll post the link the moment it goes public. Same goes for Now You See Me, which is pending clearance from a different production company.

We also had some nice animated turntables showing the stilts and brain in action which I think were neat but I'm not sure we'll be allowed to show those. If all goes well maybe they'll use it in the extras in the bluray release.

[Tim Crowson]

Alan, I saw Pacific Rim in Imax 3D and was absolutely blown away! In my opinion, it's the film that is best suited for Imax 3D projection. Other films may be fun to watch like that, but Pacific Rim really steps it up. Major ass was kicked in the making of this film.

Congrats to you Alan, and everyone else at Rodeo! Impressive stuff, and glad to know Soft was used!

I don't really understand the naysayers complaining of thin plots. Who would possibly be naive enough to go see this film for any other reason than to satisfy the 10-yr old kid in you? It's all over the previews! Don't fool yourself... you know why you're there! :-D

-Tim

--

 

[Vincent Fortin]

Congrats guys, top notch work!

I also enjoyed the film very much, it was a lot more entertaining than the average Marvel that try to be so serious. IMHO Del Toro did a good job, you can feel his personality throughout the humor, colors and ubiquitous geekiness :-)

[Ben Davis]

I also saw it in Imax 3D, I agree a 100% with Tim, it was great to be a kid again! And it was fun to see a few familiar names in the credits, great job!

--

Ben Davis

www.moondog-animation.com

+1 (423) 313 9304

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 3:59 PM, Tim Crowson <tim.c...@magneticdreams.com> wrote:

[Ognjen Vukovic]

I haven't seen it yet, but i do plan to these days.

All i can say though is that i was blown away even by the trailers that came out some time ago... So either way, congratulations and im looking forward watching it.

Cheers.

[Cesar Saez]

Congrats to everyone involved! :D

[Serguei Kalentchouk]

Congrats to everyone at Rodeo FX, really outstanding work!

--
Technical Director @ DreamWorks Animation

[Graham D. Clark]

Congrats Alan! you guys did great work at Rodeo FX, and also thanks to Hybride for getting us such well separated out holographics, so great when elements are solid deliveries for the 3D to work out.

Alan, keep up he fight, we use Softimage for all CG Vfx additions on features.

Graham D Clark, Head of Stereography, Deluxe 3D dba Stereo D

phone: why-I-stereo

http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamclark

[Upinder Dhaliwal]

Saw it in Imax3D. Awesome movie.

Congrats to everyone involved.

Cheers,
Upinder Dhaliwal
www.upinderdhaliwal.com

[Chris Chia]

Hi Alan,
Yea, do share with us some visuals (especially screenshot of SI in production)... so that we could share your thoughts with everyone here in A ;)

Regards,
Chris

[Sebastien Sterling]

Doesn't seem to be out in Belgium yet grrr, looks so cool, congratulations to the guys at Rodeo ! yay Softimage !

[Angus Davidson]

Hi Alan

Awesome work.  Just want to let you know that breakdowns like this are not only important for other professionals who have this massive shared curiosity but it also incredibly important when it comes to our students. When we made the decision to move away from Maya to Softimage for our teaching we caught quite a bit of flak for the decision. However posts like these are really great because we can show just how Softimage is being used. We have also just set up our first Arnold render farm and we are very excited to see the results we get from two really great pieces of software.

Kind regards

Angus

From: Alan Fregtman <alan.f...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: "soft...@listproc.autodesk.com" <soft...@listproc.autodesk.com>
Date: Monday 15 July 2013 9:07 PM
To: XSI Mailing List <soft...@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: OT: Pacific Rim

Hey guys,

A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I wanted to share some details with you. :)

I'm the lead rigger at Rodeo FXhttp://rodeofx.com and we did all of the interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), including the visors, foot actuators & mechanical stilts, some digidoubles, etc. (except the holograms/UI graphics that were done by the folks at Hybride.) We also had the chance of doing our first organic creature, the brain in the lab (which involved a lot of "gross" ICE deformations), as well as many beautiful matte paintings and a couple of helicopters.

This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary.

[adrian wyer]

thanks for the info Alan!!!

 

seeing it tomorrow, cannot wait!!

 

interestingly the first trailers left me cold, not a big fan of the 'speed racer' palette, and much as i love Idris Elba, the "cancelling the apocalypse" line is up there with the cheesiest bits of Hollywood writing ever...

 

but a lot of people i trust in both vfx and writing/directing have seen it and said don't be put off by the cheese....

 

a

 

---

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alan Fregtman
Sent: 15 July 2013 20:07
To: XSI Mailing List
Subject: OT: Pacific Rim

 

Hey guys,

---

No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2013.0.3349 / Virus Database: 3204/6494 - Release Date: 07/15/13

[Rob Chapman]

great news Alan, thanks for sharing. go go gadget Softimage & Arnold! (and of course, well done to the talented crew)

[Alan Fregtman]

Believe me, I know. If it was entirely up to me I'd put up lots of cool behind the scenes visuals.

With commercials, it's a piece of cake to take a screenshot and attach to an email; if it's aired it's usually fair game and rarely anyone ever cares, but when it comes to big name distributors of film,  you have to clear everything with lawyers and there's many more bureaucratic layers.

When it comes out on bluray I'll ask my boss if I can show some behind-the-scenes. I can't promise they'll allow it, but I can ask. :p

[Angus Davidson]

Hi Alan

I have had a year full of lawyers and it never a fun exercise ;) I like to think its very good exposure for the animation studios involved in production of the vfx shots .Star Wars and the Lord Of the Rings for example and the making of DVDs were massive exposure for the studios involved. Even though you might have 5 or so studios working on the shots only one (normally the main one) gets all of the limelight. It would be great to see how all the various players did their thing.

Maybe things like that need to be part of the new business model that studios need to adopt.

If they actually realize that there are a lot of people (particularly students)  that are very interested in this stuff and its not just to bulk up the blu ray they might take it more seriously. Point me at those lawyers if you need any help to plead the case ;)

---

From: Alan Fregtman [alan.f...@gmail.com]
Sent: 16 July 2013 03:51 PM
To: XSI Mailing List
Subject: Re: OT: Pacific Rim

[Ben Houston]

Amazing work Alan! :-) Pacific Rim is an awesome VFX movie.
-ben

[Sylvain Lebeau]

Hey Alan, just came back from the movie…….

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRG!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bravo Rodeo for the amazing work!!! it's cool since i've read your mail before going to actually go see the movie. 

Just like in Mortal Kombat…….  Flawless Victory!!!!

sly

Sylvain Lebeau // SHED
V-P/Visual effects supervisor
1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM <http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM>

[Sylvain Lebeau]

you better…..

i know where you live……

;-)

Sylvain Lebeau // SHED
V-P/Visual effects supervisor
1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM <http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM>

[Alan Fregtman]

Uh-oh! lol

artofvfx.com has posted an article on our work for Now You See Me. You can see some nice before & after pics:

http://www.artofvfx.com/?p=4669

** Before:

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_03B.jpg

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_04B.jpg

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_05B.jpg

** After:

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_03A.jpg

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_04A.jpg

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_05A.jpg

(falling ICE money simulations, ICE standing crowds, additional Arnold volumetric lights)

** Before:

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_11B.jpg

** After:

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_11A.jpg

(lots of funky motiongraphic cubes driven by ICE particles. not sure if the crowd is cg or 2D, I didn't work on that particular shot.)

[Rares Halmagean]

ah, these are Great! Thanks for sharing these and your detailed breakdown, Alan. It's a real treat to see Soft + Arnold used in such a big way. More please... i.e. robots and monsters. ;-)

On 7/16/2013 11:12 PM, Alan Fregtman wrote:

Uh-oh! lol

artofvfx.com has posted an article on our work for Now You See Me. You can see some nice before & after pics:

http://www.artofvfx.com/?p=4669

** Before:

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_03B.jpg

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_04B.jpg

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_05B.jpg

** After:

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_03A.jpg

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_04A.jpg

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_05A.jpg

(falling ICE money simulations, ICE standing crowds, additional Arnold volumetric lights)

** Before:

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_11B.jpg

** After:

http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_11A.jpg

(lots of funky motiongraphic cubes driven by ICE particles. not sure if the crowd is cg or 2D, I didn't work on that particular shot.)

On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 10:40 PM, Sylvain Lebeau <s...@shedmtl.com> wrote:

you better�..

i know where you live��

;-)

Sylvain Lebeau // SHED
V-P/Visual effects supervisor

1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E �TAGE MONTR�AL (QU�BEC) H3A 1P8
T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025�WWW.SHEDMTL.COM�<http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM>

On Tuesday, 16 July, 2013 at 9:51 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote:

Believe me, I know. If it was entirely up to me I'd put up lots of cool behind the scenes visuals.

With commercials, it's a piece of cake to take a screenshot and attach to an email; if it's aired it's usually fair game and rarely anyone ever cares, but when it comes to big name distributors of film, �you have to clear everything with lawyers and there's many more bureaucratic layers.

When it comes out on bluray I'll ask my boss if I can show some behind-the-scenes. I can't promise they'll allow it, but I can ask. :p

On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 4:30 AM, Angus Davidson <Angus.D...@wits.ac.za> wrote:

Hi Alan

Awesome work. �Just want to let you know that breakdowns like this are not only important for other professionals who have this massive shared curiosity but it also incredibly important when it comes to our students. When we made the decision to move away from Maya to Softimage for our teaching we caught quite a bit of flak for the decision. However posts like these are really great because we can show just how Softimage is being used. We have also just set up our first Arnold render farm and we are very excited to see the results we get from two really great pieces of software.

Kind regards

Angus

From: Alan Fregtman <alan.f...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: "soft...@listproc.autodesk.com" <soft...@listproc.autodesk.com>
Date: Monday 15 July 2013 9:07 PM
To: XSI Mailing List <soft...@listproc.autodesk.com>
Subject: OT: Pacific Rim

Hey guys,

A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I wanted to share some details with you. :)

I'm the lead rigger at�Rodeo FXhttp://rodeofx.com and we did all of the interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), including the visors, foot actuators & mechanical stilts,�some digidoubles, etc. (except the holograms/UI graphics that were done by the folks at Hybride.) We�also had the chance of doing our first organic creature, the brain in the lab (which involved a lot of "gross" ICE deformations), as well as�many beautiful matte paintings and a couple of helicopters.

Overall, we did over a hundred shots. CG was done in Softimage and as far as I know it was all rendered in our favourite renderer, Arnold! We'd still be rendering today if Mentalray had been used. :p We threw countless ~8k textures with displacement and stupid amounts of topology, and good ol' Arnie performed like a champ.

The stilts (the leg controls in the cockpit) had anything from 1500 to 2500 separate meshes and on average about 150 segments (solid groups of parts that moved as one.) Once we identified the "segments" by the end we had a rig of Arnold stand-ins with each segment saved as one ass file, and low-res geo representing that segment constrained to some part of the rig. It then became relatively "light" to have the standins rigged instead of the full raw geo, and it made it quite easy to replace parts or textures later in the pipeline during or after animation. (Also caching was a piece of cake in this scenario, as we only needed to plot the segment nulls instead of thousands of meshes or pointcaching anything.)

On the brain there was procedural pulsing animation driven by ICE deformers. Globules would "breathe", a heart-like organ would pump its ventricles�intermittently�and an intestine-like organ flowed with bulges travelling along its tract. It was gross and (in my opinion) kind of awesome. lol Speaking of ICE, there was a kind of lettuce behind the brain that was also moving a bit. The modeling was done with strips that were procedurally curled and then if I remember correctly the whole thing was driven via Syflex as the brain gently floated. This lettuce thing was handled by another guy on this mailing list, my �coworker and friend Jonathan Laborde. Maybe if he's reading this he can give more details of how he used ICE in a few other shots.

It was crazy fun project to work on. Fingers crossed that Pacific Rim 2 becomes a reality. :) Anyway, did you guys go see it? What'd you think?

Oh and speaking of other movies, we did a ton of work in "Now You See Me" as well, including hundreds of stadium dudes with our propietary ICE static crowd system, falling/flying money, cg bubbles, an art-directed liquid, lockpicking, flying cards, many vehicles, the projected motiongraphics near the end and a few invisible fx. (I feel like I probably missed something, but anyway, we did a lot.) We were the main vfx vendor on that film, delivering just over 20 minutes worth of vfx "magic" (pun intended.) Again, Soft & Arnold and lots of effects in ICE all throughout.

Cheers,

� �-- Alan

This communication is intended for the addressee only. It is confidential. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately and destroy the original message. You may not copy or disseminate this communication without the permission of the University. Only authorised signatories are competent to enter into agreements on behalf of the University and recipients are thus advised that the content of this message may not be legally binding on the University and may contain the personal views and opinions of the author, which are not necessarily the views and opinions of The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All agreements between the University and outsiders are subject to South African Law unless the University agrees in writing to the contrary.

--
Rares Halmagean
___________________________________
visual development and 3d character & content creation.
rarebrush.com

[Marc-Andre Carbonneau]

And Vincent is too modest but he and his partner also crunched some fluid shots like crazy for ILM Vancouver…

Vacation for the next two weeks for me and I almost hope it rain so I don’t feel guilty to go see all of this summer’s line up! ;)

 

 

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Vincent Fortin
Sent: 15 juillet 2013 16:14
To: softimage
Subject: Re: OT: Pacific Rim

 

Congrats guys, top notch work!

[Ben Houston]

So why doesn't RodeoFX have a blog where you can post this in more detail. :-)

-ben

--
Best regards,
Ben Houston
Voice: 613-762-4113 Skype: ben.exocortex Twitter: @exocortexcom
http://Exocortex.com - Passionate CG Software Professionals.

[Eric Thivierge]

Not everyone is cool enough to have their own blog Ben. :P

Eric Thivierge
===============
Character TD / RnD
Hybride Technologies

On July-17-13 10:25:41 AM, Ben Houston wrote:
> So why doesn't RodeoFX have a blog where you can post this in more
> detail. :-)
> -ben
>
> On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 12:12 AM, Alan Fregtman
> <alan.f...@gmail.com <mailto:alan.f...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Uh-oh! lol
>

> artofvfx.com <http://artofvfx.com> has posted an article on our
> work for */Now You See Me/*. You can see some nice before & after

> pics:
> http://www.artofvfx.com/?p=4669
>
> ** Before:
> http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_03B.jpg
> http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_04B.jpg
> http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_05B.jpg
>
> ** After:
> http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_03A.jpg
> http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_04A.jpg
> http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_05A.jpg
> (falling ICE money simulations, ICE standing crowds, additional
> Arnold volumetric lights)
>
>
>
> ** Before:
> http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_11B.jpg
> ** After:
> http://www.artofvfx.com/NOW/NOW_RODEOFX_VFX_11A.jpg
> (lots of funky motiongraphic cubes driven by ICE particles. not
> sure if the crowd is cg or 2D, I didn't work on that particular shot.)
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 10:40 PM, Sylvain Lebeau <s...@shedmtl.com
> <mailto:s...@shedmtl.com>> wrote:
>
> you better…..
>
> i know where you live……
>
> ;-)
>

> *Sylvain Lebeau // SHED**
> *V-P/Visual effects supervisor

> 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
> T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025WWW.SHEDMTL.COM

> <http://www.shedmtl.com/> <http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM
> <http://www.shedmtl.com/>>

>
> On Tuesday, 16 July, 2013 at 9:51 AM, Alan Fregtman wrote:
>
>> Believe me, I know. If it was entirely up to me I'd put up
>> lots of cool behind the scenes visuals.
>>
>> With commercials, it's a piece of cake to take a screenshot
>> and attach to an email; if it's aired it's usually fair game
>> and rarely anyone ever cares, but when it comes to big name
>> distributors of film, you have to clear everything with
>> lawyers and there's many more bureaucratic layers.
>>
>> When it comes out on bluray I'll ask my boss if I can show
>> some behind-the-scenes. I can't promise they'll allow it, but
>> I can ask. :p
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 4:30 AM, Angus Davidson
>> <Angus.D...@wits.ac.za

>>> I'm the lead rigger at /Rodeo FX/http://rodeofx.com and we

[Alan Fregtman]

Hehe, I wish! I'll suggest it though.

In the meantime, there's a handful of social profiles:

https://www.facebook.com/rodeofx

https://vimeo.com/rodeofx

http://www.youtube.com/user/RodeoVFX/videos

http://www.behance.net/RodeoFX

https://plus.google.com/106443376038511688221/posts

http://pinterest.com/rodeofx/